Nigel Lythgoe, the "So You Think You Can Dance" judge who sometimes plays the harsh Simon Cowell role on the Fox show, couldn't make it to New Orleans auditions for the series' sixth season held over the weekend at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

"Dance's" other judges tend to me much more empathetic than Lythgoe, good news for the 200-plus young people who auditioned here.

"Without Nigel being here today, which I liken now to being a kid at his first day at summer camp missing his parents, we don't have that dynamic, somebody really taking the floor," said guest judge Adam Shankman, a Broadway dance veteran, music-video choreographer and film director ("Hairspray"). "We're all very opinionated in our own ways, but he's really like this hammer.

According to his own Twitter posts in recent days, Lythgoe underwent successful elective surgery to correct disc trouble in his neck, and had to skip the New Orleans auditions so he could convalesce on the West Coast.

"I had to have an MRI on my neck today," Lythgoe Tweeted on June 8. "The constant noise from the machine reminded me of a few Rap Tracks I've heard!!!"

Lythgoe will reportedly be well enough to reappear in time for the continuation of the show's fifth season this week. "Dance" airs locally at 7 p.m. Wednesday and 8 p.m. Thursday on WVUE-Channel 8.

If Nigel's no-show was a positive note for the auditioning dancers, the timing of the open call was not.

The New Orleans auditions happened while the judges also were thinking about the finalists who'd advanced thus far on the competition's summer season.

"Everybody has a disadvantage because season five is on right now," Shankman said. "They're literally auditioning against the kids who are on the show right now (who are) in the upper echelon. They're very clear in our minds.

"The bar keeps getting raised. If they're not close to that, we're not inclined to put people through."

Added judge Lil' C, a dancer and choreographer renowned as a practitioner of the "Krumping" style of urban dance, "These people who are auditioning have to be better than the dancers on the show right now."

On Friday morning, as the auditioning dancers waited on line outside the convention center for the dance-offs to begin, the prospect of swift judgment loomed.

"It's very harsh," said Justin Kenney, a 23-year-old hip-hop freestyler from Baton Rouge. "So you've got to be a strong enough person and a strong enough dancer to get in there and be critiqued."

Kenney would know. He'd already auditioned for the fall season at the show's earlier Atlanta auditions.

"I didn't really quite know what they were looking for," he said. "Now that I do, I'm definitely more prepared."

Robert Lockett, age 20, and a student at Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Miss., said he hadn't prepared a routine in his specialty, hip-hop.

"I'm just going to freestyle it," he said. "I've always been that guy at parties and clubs to go out there and hopefully impress people."

Chalmette native Erica Esteves, dancing since age 2 and now a student at LSU, had prepared a contemporary routine.

"I'm mostly here to get the experience," she said. "I've never auditioned for anything as big as this.

"The whole way here, while I was driving, I said, 'I think I'm going to turn around.' I stuck it out and I'm glad I'm here."

Leon Banks, a 20-year-old pre-med student at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, drove through the night with three friends to arrive in time for the auditions.

Receiving a possible swift judgment on their talent didn't seem to intimidate Banks or his friends.

"We know when we're messing up," he said.

All of the auditioners in Friday's line would perform first for casting producers before being passed on to the star judges for further advancement.

Or not.

The names of dancers who were elevated beyond the local-audition stage of the series will be kept secret until the episode airs on or after the Sept. 16 "So You Think You Can Dance" season six premiere.

Nationally, the fifth season of "Dance" is top rated in its time slots, averaging about 8 million viewers.

At the far opposite end of the line that started in Friday's blistering heat on Convention Center Boulevard was a possible cash prize and dance fame. The season five winner will get $250,000 and a role in an upcoming Shankman film titled "Step Up 3-D."

By the time the production had stopped for lunch Saturday -- and with many hours of auditions to go -- the judges had mixed opinions about the overall quality of the dancers they'd seen in New Orleans.

"Frankly, we're seeing a little bit of mediocrity," Shankman said. "Seriously, I have seen more hip-hop today than I saw all last season."

"There's been a couple of surprises," Lil' C said. "It's a roller coaster -- up and down.

"It started out kind of slow, but there's some diamonds in the rough."

And one outright diamond, identity to come.

"We've already found (one) extraordinary (dancer)," said judge Mary Murphy, the show's excitable ballroom-dancing expert. "I do believe we've found somebody who has a very good chance to be in our Top 20 (for season six).